VENTURA : Students Hear Message of Hope

The 11 youths from a Ventura residential treatment program listened intently Tuesday to the 21-year-old woman telling them that she has been where they are now.

Sitting cross-legged on a folding table, Ventura resident Katalina Um spoke to nine girls and two boys at the Paul R. Tomich School, a small facility run by the nonprofit Poinsettia Foundation.

The foundation also runs group homes in Ventura and Oxnard for the children--all wards of the state--who attend the school.

Um said she was sent from Korea to live with relatives in the United States when she was 10. Her father had just died and her mother’s whereabouts were unknown.

But life in Oklahoma with her aunt and uncle didn’t work out. “There wasn’t a lot of love there,” she said.

From ages 11 to 16, Um bounced from one adoptive or foster home to another until she landed in a group residential care facility such as the Poinsettia Foundation homes. She said she was miserable and began taking drugs, but eventually turned her life around.

But in July, Um was found to have a rare form of leukemia. Since then, she has been undergoing chemotherapy and has taken on a program of volunteerism, feeding the homeless and giving talks such as the one Tuesday, that she says keeps her feeling positive.

Um urged her young audience to nurture hope for the future.

“You guys are in good health,” she said.

“Nobody dying of anything out there?” she asked, with some humor.

Despite the similarities between Um and her audience, one boy said he wasn’t impressed.

“I’ve been through worse,” said the dark-haired 16-year-old from Fresno. The youth said he had been heavily involved in a street gang before coming to the Poinsettia Foundation a month ago. And he said he had been sexually abused.

He admitted that he hasn’t had cancer. “That’s one thing I don’t want,” he said. But he also said he couldn’t relate to Um’s philosophy of keeping faith in the future.

“I don’t think ahead,” the boy said. “I just take it as it comes.”